-
About
Our Story
back- Our Mission
- Our Leadership
- Accessibility
- Careers
- Diversity, Equity, Inclusion
- Learning Science
- Sustainability
Our Solutions
back
-
Community
Community
back- Newsroom
- Discussions
- Webinars on Demand
- Digital Community
- The Institute at Macmillan Learning
- English Community
- Psychology Community
- History Community
- Communication Community
- College Success Community
- Economics Community
- Institutional Solutions Community
- Nutrition Community
- Lab Solutions Community
- STEM Community
- Newsroom
What is Academic Writing? Part Three
- Subscribe to RSS Feed
- Mark as New
- Mark as Read
- Bookmark
- Subscribe
- Printer Friendly Page
- Report Inappropriate Content
01-30-2013
09:35 AM
In this series of posts, I’d like to think about student responses to a first day writing sample that asked “What is academic writing?” (broadly, of course, for IRB-related reasons). Though the sample size is really quite small I think these students nevertheless reveal some of what many students bring to our classrooms. One of the things that students bring, represented in many of the responses, is a particular understanding of the form of academic writing, an understanding created through No Child Left Behind (NCLB) or (more specifically) the FCAT, Florida’s mechanism for complying with that federal legislation. These responses were easy to spot because they emphasized not just the form of academic writing but a very specific form—and a very formulaic one. The students who presented this view of academic writing indicated that it has an introduction, a conclusion, and a thesis. I’m not sure how to feel about this grouping. The overall tripartite construction, broadly speaking, applies to the kind of writing we ask students to do in our writing courses. But I am concerned about how that preconceived notion of form might limit students and how it might even block them from writing well or writing at all. I don’t want to open the NCLB can of worms here, but I'm wondering about the experiences of other teachers. Do tests like the FCAT do anything at all to prepare students for your classroom? Are they a start? Or are they a hindrance? Do we building on what students learned in high school? Or do we tear it down?
You must be a registered user to add a comment. If you've already registered, sign in. Otherwise, register and sign in.
About the Author
Barclay Barrios is an Associate Professor of English and Director of Writing Programs at Florida Atlantic University, where he teaches freshman composition and graduate courses in composition methodology and theory, rhetorics of the world wide web, and composing digital identities. He was Director of Instructional Technology at Rutgers University and currently serves on the board of Pedagogy. Barrios is a frequent presenter at professional conferences, and the author of Emerging.